'Jom Ha Sjoa' - column van Rob Fransman

Wereldwijd vragen Israëlische ambassades aandacht voor de jaarlijkse herdenkingsdag van de Holocaust. De Holocaust in Israël al herdacht sinds de oprichting van de staat. Vandaag staat los van de door de Verenigde Naties in 2005 ingestelde International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Israël hebben ze – om begrijpelijke redenen - niet zo heel veel op met de VN.

De officiële naam van de herdenkingsdag is Yom HaShoah ve-haGevurah, Dag van de Sjoa en het verzet. Dat verzet slaat voornamelijk op de opstand in 1943 in het getto van Warschau. Ook in Nederland wordt vandaag herdacht, zij het op kleine schaal. Vanavond was er de jaarlijkse herdenking bij de Hollandse Schouwburg en hier en daar zijn er in Nederland meer herdenkingsbijeenkomsten.

Om terug te komen op de Israëlische ambassades: Een dierbaar familielid is verbonden aan de Israëlische ambassade in Ethiopië die zeer nauw samenwerkt met de Israëlische ambassade in Burundi. Beide ambassades schonken aandacht aan de herdenkingsdag en sloten die af met een bijeenkomst op Zoom. Mij werd gevraagd of ik mijn oorlogsverhaal op Zoom wilde vertellen. Aan dat eervolle verzoek voldeed ik heel graag. Dit is wat ik vertelde aan voor mij wel zeer ongebruikelijke toehoorders.

Dear virtual guests,

My name is Rob Fransman. I was born in The Hague in June 1940, one month after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. When the war ended, I was five years old. Yet the events of that time have shaped my entire life — and they still do today.

The Second World War remains an inexhaustible source of stories. I know of no event in history that has had such a lasting impact on daily life in the Netherlands. Even more than eighty years later, people still speak about it — not only in Holland, but across the whole world. Your presence today is proof of that.

My family had lived in Amsterdam for centuries. They were poor — very poor.

Jews arrived in large numbers during the Inquisition from the Iberian Peninsula. In the 17th century, the Dutch Republic became a place of relative tolerance. Well-educated Portuguese Sephardic Jews settled here, alongside much poorer Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. My family belonged to the latter group.

I traced my family back to 1714. They lived in extreme poverty. In 1852, my ancestor Salomon Fransman lived with eight children in a single-room apartment in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter, near the Portuguese Synagogue. Hundreds of families lived under similar conditions — without running water, with barrels in hallways serving as toilets.

My grandfather Gabriel became a diamond worker — a step up from poverty. My father, Izak, born in 1898, was the first in the family to receive a proper education. He became a buyer for the Bijenkorf department stores and later general manager of the Rotterdam branch. For the first time, the family entered the middle class. My parents bought a house in Scheveningen, near the sea. That is where I was born.

When the Germans invaded, life for the general population remained relatively bearable at first. But for Jews, persecution began almost immediately.

Step by step, Jews were excluded from society:

they lost their jobs,

children were expelled from schools,

assets were confiscated,

movement was restricted,

and public life became inaccessible.

Finally, in May 1942, Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David — a proud symbol turned into a mark of humiliation.

Deportations began. At first slowly, then systematically. Entire families were ordered to report for what was called “work in Eastern Europe.”

Some believed they would survive. Many did not go into hiding — they had nowhere to go, and no money to sustain it. However, my parents did find a hiding place1943. But we had to flee separately. My brother found a hiding place and survived. I was taken by our nanny, Pietje Mol, to her parents in a village near Rotterdam. My parents hid nearby. Every day, my mother watched me from behind the curtains as I passed by in a pram. She could see me — but she could never touch me. Soon, betrayal followed. A neighbor reported us. My parents fled back to The Hague, but were arrested shortly afterward. They were imprisoned, interrogated, and then sent to the transit camp Westerbork.

Westerbork was a holding camp. Life there was harsh but, for a time, survivable — except for one thing: every week, transport lists were published.

My parents were arrested on March 23, 1943. On April 4, they were deported with nearly two thousand others.

They were sent to Sobibor.

Almost all were murdered within hours of arrival. Sobibor was not a labor camp. It was a killing factory. Of the more than 34,000 Dutch Jews deported there, only sixteen survived.

My parents, Izak and Rachel Fransman, were among those who were murdered. I survived because my nanny, and her parents — the Mol family — risked their lives.

When the situation became too dangerous, they took me across the country and eventually handed me over to the resistance. I was hidden in many places — at least twelve.

I remember only fragments: hiding under floors, soldiers’ boots above my head, a hand over my mouth to keep me silent.

After the war, I was alone. Distant relatives took me in, but they were deeply traumatized themselves. Eventually, I was placed in a Jewish orphanage, where I stayed until I was eighteen.

I began by saying that the Holocaust has influenced my entire life. Of course, during my professional career I had to provide for my family, and I was less occupied with the past.

But in 2011, when I was already retired, the trial of the war criminal John Demjanjuk began in Munich. He had been a guard at Sobibor.

German law gave me the opportunity to attend the trial as the child of murdered parents. More than that, I was allowed to participate as a Nebenkläger — a co-prosecutor, with the same rights as the prosecution.

I lacked legal training, but the court appointed a lawyer to represent me. For one and a half years, I followed the entire trial. I also wrote about it and later published a book.

Demjanjuk was sentenced to the relatively light punishment of five years’ imprisonment.

But the sentence itself was not what mattered most to me.

What was truly important was what I learned: when it comes to great injustice, there is always a side you must choose.

In the camps, the distinction was brutally clear: victims and perpetrators. There was no real middle ground.

That realization became a guideline for me.

If you do not resist injustice, you become part of it.

That was true then — and it is just as true today.

That realization brings me to the present.

The invasion by Hamas and the murder of 1,200 innocent people set in motion something I had no longer thought possible. Everyone knew that antisemitism was still dormant in Europe. Still, the reactions that followed these atrocities came to the Jewish community as a complete surprise.

After October 7, a wave of hatred toward Jews seemed to erupt. Posters showing the faces of the hostages were torn down on the very day they were put up. Activists — often students — appeared to take a venomous pleasure in doing so.

Since then, their slogan has been “from the river to the sea.”

At universities, Israeli speakers are refused. Jewish students are excluded and insulted. In the streets of major cities, there are daily demonstrations.

The demonstrators — often masked, always anonymous — say they do not hate Jews, “only Zionists.”

But we know, and we feel in our hearts, that this is not true.

It makes me concerned, but not pessimistic. Absolutely not.

Without optimism, the Jewish people could not have survived. It is optimism that has always allowed us to rise again after adversity. The examples are countless.

It is a tradition I gladly continue — especially today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which we call Yom HaShoah.

My wife and I were among the very few who came out of the Holocaust.

Today, we have a close-nit family of more than twenty people — and still growing.

We would not exist without a hopeful and confident belief in the future.

I thank the Israeli embassies in Burundi and Ethiopia for the opportunity to share my story.

Thank you for your attention.